What? What happened to summer?

It's summertime and the living is easy...

It seems like I've got just a few more days of that. It doesn't help that my wife is a teacher and she stays busy with summer-school-- she winds up with just a few weeks of actual off-time. And those seem to go by so quickly.

However, we no longer have a deck in the back of our 70's ranch-style home. Just a frame right now. Watch your step out the back door-- it's a doozy and then you'll wind up breaking yourself on a couple of the joists. Oof!

My dad came up to help but the weather hasn't cooperated. First we had temps breaking 100 and then it was followed by rain! Oh and then there were the damn termites and carpenter ants busy eating my house.

So what does this have to do with me and the bikes? We haven't seen much of each other the last 10 days. Boo hoo.

This weekend, though. The forecast looks sunny and I plan on being out there.

Yeah yeah... the deck will get some attention, too.

Stop the madness! Again! Some More!

Carbon nanotubes bad for your lungs? The environment? (Your lungs.)

Okay, maybe I'm being something of an alarmist, but one really can't ignore stuff like this outright:

Carbon Nanotubes That Look Like Asbestos, Behave Like Asbestos

New study shows inhaling long, thin carbon nanotubes may result in asbestos-like health effects.

This is the head and sub-head of an article on The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies website. It's based on a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology that reports on a study done that indicates that carbon nanotubes, introduced into the body (the tests were conducted on mice), have an asbestos-like pathogenicity.

Remember asbestos? If it got into your lungs, you were pretty much toast. Asbestos fibers were long, thin fibers very much like carbon-nanotubes.

Go here to read the PEN article: http://www.nanotechproject.org/news/archive/mwcnt/

Go here to read the abstract of the Nature Nanotechnology article: http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v3/n7/abs/nnano.2008.111.html

I was turned onto this by a post on the Cozy Beehive. (In the same post there's some love for Thomson components-- which are NOT carbon composite!)

Why am I bothering with this? I'm not a huge fan of carbon composites in general. Now I'm not a "Luddite" but sometimes I think we humans have a tendency to do things because we can (Times like this I'm always reminded of the joke about why dogs lick their balls...)

We've created this wonderful amazing material, but what is the net effect of its creation and disposal? I mean, c'mon-- go Google "snapped carbon steerer" or some variation and you'll doubtless turn up plenty of scary reading material. And that's just for steerers-- not handlebars, forks, seatposts and even frames.

I'll mention this again-- do carbon composite materials degrade into healthful fertilizer when they're disposed of? Or do they shed harmful component chemicals and dangerous particulate matter?

I know I'm just scratching the surface and not touching on other toxic manufacturing processes involved in the manufacture of metal alloy bicycles and components.

Still... I guess it's good to ask questions, right?

Going from 2 to 8 wheels...

So I finally got my speed skates. After the 1994 series of skate races held concurrently with the twilight criterium in Boise, I vowed to return the next summer with speed skates.

Okay, well, 14 years later and one state over and I've done it.

Getting ready to head out to PIR I had the nagging feeling that I was forgetting something. My bike! It felt really strange heading out fully kitted for riding but no bike.

I went out for only one skate last week. The streets around home are terrible and my street in particular is not even paved! I felt like I had never skated before-- all wobbly and feeling like I was just going to keel over. I was rather shocked! My experience on the speed skates was nothing like I had imagined. It wasn't even fun! I had always imagined myself just gliding along-- a good strong push and I'd just coast along... then touching down with my other foot and pushing off again. Instead I felt terribly uncordinated and kept overbalancing on the outsides of my feet. After a pathetic 15 minutes I went back home worried that maybe I had wasted my money.

Silly me. First, the frames weren't even lined up properly on the boots. Thanks to some helpful skates on the Inine Planet forums I was able to get my frames in a good neutral spot. I practiced in my living room by standing on one skate at a time. After the adjustments, I could easily stand on one stake and not feel like I was tipping over.

When Monday came and it was time to head out to PIR to meet up with the other skaters there I was just beside myself.But I was worried that I would just flounder around out there. Would it be a horrible ordeal? Whould I remember how to skate? After my first test run around the neighborhood I wasn't sure. I also hoped that I wouldn't fall and lose any skin or shred my shorts.

The asphalt track at PIR was awesome.

It was everything I had dreamed of all these years. It was exactly like I imagined that speed skating would be. Unless you've skated -- really skated, tucked in and just sailing along -- you have no idea how incredible it is. I guess it takes some work to get there and I'm glad my body remembered what to do (mostly) but the payoff is totally worth it. I love bikes and the sensation of movment and the wheels spinning, but this is totally different.

I had a fantastic time out on the asphalt. The time we had to skate just flew by and before I knew it it was time to get off the track and make way for the cyclists. I wanted more skating but my back was complaining and my legs were all noodly feeling. Altogether a very pleasant sensation-- let's you know that you've had a good run.

. . .

I took a few minutes and I can't really properly describe it. The sense of movement while skating -- of pushing with one leg and gliding on the other is, I think, the core appeal to me. The speed, too. That's important, too.

Sadly there's just two more sessions out at PIR until the skating's done there for the summer. Then what? Maybe indoor this fall?

I'd better cut my reverie short and get back to work.

Stop the madness!

This is obviously one of the signs of the apocalypse:

Bonty's new carbon composite mountain bike wheels.

When I was in high school I remember getting totally excited to see Kestrel's full-suspension concept mountain bike utilizing nary a lick of metal tubing for the main triangle and swingarm. All carbon composite. As Chowder would put it: "Excitement!" That bike never saw the light of day-- the light of day that filters through a bike shop's front window, that is. It remained a concept bike.

Then there was that weird Trimble thing. Brent Trimble was actually the designer/builder behind Kestrel's hubba-hubba concept bike that got me so excited (I believe). I actually saw one of those in a bike shop.

This was 1988-1989. Maybe 1987. I still have my 1989 steel Specialized Sumpjumper. I've not seen any of those composite-framed bikes anywhere in the last 15 years. Not hanging on a wall, not being ridden. I see tons and tons of 1970's steel Peugeots, Schwinns, Sears, etc. out and about. Why? Why is that? The carbon-composite proponents like to laud carbon's nigh infinite fatigue life. Where are these everlasting carbon-coposite bikes?

Hang on. I must inetrject-- I'm a total retro-grouch. I've come a long way from the drooling school-boy lusting over the Trimble and the vapor-ware Bushido racer (10 points if you can post a pic of the Bushido.) I no longer think that carbon composites have much place on bicycles.

They're too vulnerable. A scratch and effectively ruin (total?) a carbon-composite part. And I've only been racing cyclocross three seasons but I've seen enough broken composite seatposts to make my bung pucker up to the size of a pore. And the one snapped fork was one too many.

I've also read about too many snapped carbon steerers. Well, again-- one is too many. Makes me cringe.

So where am I going? Carbon wheels for mountain bikes are insane unless you're a pro and someone else is providing you with hardware. Or you're stupidly rich.

Maybe in another 10-15 years we'll have carbon composite bikes and components that won't fail in such spectacular ways and turn themselves into toxic, non-recyclable land-fill.

End of rant. Sorry.

Good Stuff: The King Cage waterbottle cage

The King Cage. Appropriately named, it is probably the best waterbottle cage I have ever owned. The Specialized (plastic/composite) mountain cages were pretty good and I still have 4 that have been in service since the early 1990's, but the King Cage will likely be around after I'm dead. It's classy looking and classic. It's the kind of component that you move from bike to bike.

It's tubular steel so it's very light. It's recyclable. If it gets bent-- bend it back. It grips bottles like a crazed gorilla. Oh, and it's hand-made. Big points on my list. (I'm a snob, sure.)

My only complaint is that I didn't have the cash to pick up a couple when I had the opportunity to buy at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show. The King Cage folks were there selling their stuff. The steel cages were a fiddling $8. Yeah! Want to buy them anywhere else and you're paying twice that.

Still, at $17.00 or so they're awesome. If you find them for less than that-- stock up!


www.kingcage.com

Farewell MTB Short-Track...

Short-track #6. The last short-track race of the summer. Fooey. The world has just a little less color in it now. My lungs have just a little less dust in them. As part of the his year I participated in the craaazy wacky relay-race. I found myself part of a rag-tag team of ten misfits. The "Goonies" of mtb short-track racing, you might say. Well, I think maybe I was the only goonie... everybody else looked pretty cool and seemed to know what they were doing-- The "A-Team" of mtb short-track. Well then that would make me the Murdoch. I was constantly advised to "Keep pushing the pedals around and look for the people waving and shouting your name. You can do it!"

Wait... what am I talking about?

Seriously though the relay race was really fun. 10 riders on a team. You get one lap around the motocross track (thank goodness) going as hard as you can. As soon as you get into the relay zone, your team-mate takes off for their turn at making their lungs bleed. Whee! I have newfound respect for BMXers. Good grief-- I felt like my lungs were going to jump out through my throat and then explode.

The organizers gave away more Clif Shot Bloks that I thought even existed on the planet. Quick note about the raffle: Everyone was obviously there with hopes of snagging the Chris King wheelset. During every other drawing there was lots of chatter and noise from the crowd. Even when they gave away sets of Yakima racks (sweet!) there was still a background murmur. When the Chris King wheelset was announced as the next (and last) prize? You could have head a pin drop in the powdery dirt of the short-track.

In the end it was a fun 6 weeks. I think the series was even better this year than last (my first year racing short-track) so that's a good sign. Thanks to the folks of Portland Racing for putting on a good show and thanks to the volunteers for making the whole thing go.

On to cyclocross!